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As water professionals, we are constantly challenged to make the most of the data we collect and use this to make data-driven decisions. In this webinar, we have three guest presenters speaking about some of the tools and solutions that are being developed across the water industry to do just this. Join us online (via Zoom) to learn about these tools, and different ways for visualising your data. Presentations will include:

• Luke Cunningham and Rianda Mills from Rain Consulting presenting on Art vs Science – “Parlez Vous Francais?“
• Sarah Martin and Sharon Blum-Caon from the Corangamite CMA presenting on the new CCMA online interactive webtool
• Christian Borovac from DiscoverEI presenting on Why Power BI is making waves in the Water Industry

Don’t miss this opportunity to join us online to improve your understanding of data visualisation and communication solutions being used across the water industry, and what digital tools are available. More information on each session is below.

Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA)

Presentation Summary: The new CCMA online interactive webtool

A key responsibility of the Corangamite CMA is managing delivery of water for the environment in the Upper Barwon River, Moorabool River and the Lower Barwon Wetlands. In mid-2019 staff at the CCMA began exploring the concept of an online data visualisation feature for the new CCMA website, to improve water literacy and community engagement in the water for the environment program. The project was led by CCMA staff members Sarah Martin (Communications & Engagement) and Sharon Blum-Caon (Estuaries & Environmental Water), and brought to life with the expertise of Alice Drummond and Christian Borovac of DiscoverEI.

Biography

The Corangamite Catchment Management Authority works to ensure the protection and sustainable development of land, vegetation and water resources across 13,340 square kilometres of south-western Victoria and 175 kilometres of coastal fringe. The region is home to approximately 420,000 people and includes Geelong, Ballarat, Colac, the Otways and the Surf Coast.

Rain Consulting:

Presentation Summary: Art vs Science – “Parlez Vous Francais?“

Does your audience speak French? The chances are a small percentage may, but the vast majority may not. This is why good data visualisation techniques are so very important – it has the power to make complex scientific information accessible to a much wider audience, so everyone can make their own conclusions from our work. Our style takes the complex data and provides it back in a beautiful and simply translated format.

In our time as engineers in the water industry, we’ve seen good, bad and ugly examples of data representation. We’ll discuss why our style is so important to us and share some tips and tricks. We’ll provide several examples of our work where we’ve had fun translating the information, explaining our thought process along the way.

Biography

Rain Consulting is a new and already highly regarded urban water management consultancy comprised of its Directors (and Principal Engineers) Rianda Mills and Luke Cunningham. Whilst Rain was only formed in 2019, we have decades of experience in the Victorian water industry – we are technical experts in our fields. Rianda has a broad technical skillset covering many aspects of surface water management, which culminated in a passion for and direction towards Integrated Water Management approximately 5 years ago. Luke is an urban stormwater and flood management expert who is regularly asked to present his knowledge at universities and at public and private industry seminars. He most enjoys applying his knowledge and creative thinking skillset to solve difficult challenges in relation to water management for climate change conditions. Based in Melbourne, Rain deliver projects focused on stakeholder engagement and technical workshop facilitation; flood and stormwater modelling and mitigation from concept through to functional design; Integrated Water Management; strategy, policy and guidelines development; and, expert advice and strategic thinking.

Christian Borovac (DiscoverEI)

Presentation summary: Why Power BI is making waves in the Water Industry

In this age of ‘Big Data’ and real time monitoring, our water industry is literally drowning in data. As water professionals, we are constantly challenged to make the most of the data we collect and use this to make data-driven decisions. However, traditional tools such as Excel are now struggling to process the sheer volumes of data, and coding languages such as R and Python often come with a steep learning curve. Business Intelligence platforms such as Power BI do provide a great low-code alternative for processing, analysing and communicating a wide range of datasets. Christian will present a short informative session explaining Power BI, and show some examples of how it has been applied across the water industry to inform decision-making within organisations.

Biography

Christian is director and co-founder at DiscoverEI. He focuses on using clever communication methods and visual tools to effectively deliver a message. Through his experiences working as an environmental engineer, he has navigated through the realms and ever-changing platform of the business intelligence tool Microsoft Power BI. He has seen first-hand how powerful it is for processing, analysing and visualising environmental data, and how it can be applied across the environmental and water industries. At DiscoverEI, he combines data analytics with animations and infographics to enhance this message in environmental intelligence. He is an active member of the Melbourne Microsoft data analytics community and also part of the RBMS committee.

Details for joining us via Zoom meetings will be sent upon registration (once received, scroll down to ‘Additional Information’).